


The Look

by notjustmom



Series: Pepperony [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 18:01:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17451764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjustmom/pseuds/notjustmom
Summary: A riff on the look across the room between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.





	The Look

The image of Pepper Potts he took with him into Afghanistan is not the one he can spy through the crowd. Her usual no-nonsense hair is a tumble of curls, and a teal, is it teal? Possibly teal dress, backless, and shimmering, in place of her normal tailored suit - but it’s not the dress, or the curls that has made him stop breathing for a split second, it’s the way her blue eyes light up as she smiles at him, before she remembers who he is. He puts down his glass and nods to the agent, who is babbling away at him, about some debriefing, and makes his way over to ask her to dance. He knows better, he does, but at the moment, he doesn’t care. He needs to thank her for saving him in the cave, but he stops, because he is sure she will misunderstand him, possibly mistake his words for a delayed reaction to his ordeal, and he also knows, even at that moment, that it won’t be the last time she will save him.

 

He can’t remember when exactly it was that he hired her, all he does remember is that one morning after one of those nights, she was there, as the afternoon light banged against his eyelids, with a cup of espresso in one hand and his phone in the other, and she never left. The one person who never left him, or let him down, in spite of everything, is looking at him in that way and he knows, he knows more than he knows anything, more than he has ever known anything that he is falling in love with her. He also knows they would be a disaster, because he is a disaster, has always been a disaster; will always be a disaster.

“Tony?” She lays her hand on his arm and he flinches at her touch.

“Sorry, drink, martini, you said, olives?”

“At least three, please?”

 

Pepper Potts, who never forgets anything, remembers everything about Tony Stark. Every single thing. She does remember the day she first looked into the biggest, sweetest eyes she had ever seen, and understood more than she had ever known anything that to fall in love with him would be the biggest mistake of her life, and yet she knew it was inevitable. 

She turns her head just enough to see Tony standing there, across the room, frozen in place. 

It’s been three months since he’s been home, and he hasn’t left the confines of his workshop, except on those rare nights when he has actually made it to bed to sleep. Most mornings she has found him already at work, muttering to DUM-E or Jarvis about the next improvement that needs to be made. Only once had she caught him asleep at his desk, but he wasn’t at peace, his jaw was tight and his eyes were working hard against the back of his eyelids, fighting against something. She quickly left the workshop and didn’t let him know what she had seen, though, of course, he had realized, and only offered her a shrug when she brought him coffee an hour later.

She sees something in his eyes that she’s never seen before, it is surprise and an open gentleness that she had always suspected laid beneath the hardness he carried like armor, between him and the rest of the world. She blinks and he’s standing in front of her, asking her to dance, and looking at her as if he’s discovered the eighth wonder of the world.

She knows it is only a matter of time before she will give him a chance to break her heart.


End file.
